


If home is where the heart is...

by Amelior8or



Series: Drarryland 2019 [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And all that entails, Gen, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Isolation, Malfoy Manor, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 14:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amelior8or/pseuds/Amelior8or
Summary: It's Seventh year, and Draco's as much a prisoner in the manor as the people locked up downstairs.





	If home is where the heart is...

**Author's Note:**

> For the Drarryland prompt: Destiny revealed: You have drawn the Wheel of Fortune card, reversed. You must write a tale of bad luck, loss of control, or the desperate clinging to control. Ruled by the god Jupiter, the highest leader of all, the card indicates the theme of power and transformation. The powers that be foresee many words, but less than 953. [ You may learn more about the reversed card here for inspiration](https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/the-wheel-of-fortune-meaning-major-arcana-tarot-card-meanings)
> 
> With a great big thank you to [ Orpheous87 ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orpheous87/pseuds/orpheous87) for the beta!

The final petals on the winter roses had fallen when Draco left Seventh year for the last time to return to the manor. Their branches stretched out, bare and ruthless, reaching with pinprick thorns to cling at his robes as he strode up the walk.

For every other return home, he had been a king, charging the great stone stairs to the main entrance and claiming his kingdom, certain that every single atom of the manor and its grounds celebrated his arrival like it would the first blush of summer sun. The satisfaction of it would bloom like a fire in Draco’s blood whenever he entered the grounds, _his_ grounds, his own small empire.

Now, as his mother reached out to him from the top of the stairs, waiting for him to climb up, Draco could feel the frosted evening air seep into his lungs, entombing him in his own bones.

He was coming home in disgrace. The Carrows had ratted on the ways Draco had dodged using Cruciatus curses on first years, and had lacked the resolve to make the curse stick when cornered into it. Aunt Bella herself had written back, when all the many, many new dwellers of the manor had heard. _He needs lessons in committing to the cause_ , she wrote. _He can’t make it hurt if he doesn’t understand how much it hurts_. _I’ll make sure he learns_.

She taught him the moment he walked into the main parlour. She taught him over and over until he couldn’t consistently control his own limbs but could consistently use the curse on a line of Muggles she had brought before him.

The first night he was home, Fenrir Greyback had followed Draco down the hallway that led to his rooms. He had crowded into Draco’s space, licked a line from Draco’s collarbone to jaw, and spoke of how he truly loved the taste of pretty little boys. He spoke of how when — not if — Draco lost the Dark Lord’s favour, Fenrir would ask for his own little favour, to have a full moon night locked in a room with Draco and his delicate little bones.

Draco closed his bedroom door between him and the rest of the manor, then locked it, spelled it, and yanked a table in front of it. He drew his bed curtains closed around him and wrapped himself in his oldest blanket, one that smelled of his mother’s fresh flowers, fortifying himself for the night.

There were more nights, after many days full of prisoners and incarcerators and moments where Draco stopped knowing which one he was.

He wondered about Potter on those nights, thinking of him hiding out in the world somewhere, wondering if it was jealously that he felt germinating in his ribs. Would he prefer a life out free under an open sky, but on the run from a madman desperate for your death? Or a life kept at the madman’s mercy, following the exacting footsteps of his regime?

The house elves stopped obeying him, at least on things that contradicted orders from higher-ranking Death Eaters. Doors he had never paused in passing through were now locked to him. The portraits who used to greet him now either sneered at him or hid from him.

Draco had taken to wearing his suits thicker, the collars on his shirts higher, the cuffs at his wrists tighter. The weather was cool and the season was of death and the extra layers were justifiable in keeping as much skin as possible safe from the fetid air that had filled his home.

At the beginning of Easter weekend, Draco found his mother in the tea room during a rare moment of quiet. He sat as close to her as was acceptable should a surprise Death Eater wander in.

“I’m tired, Mother,” was all he dared to say.

“You are a Malfoy,” his mother said, staring into a fire that Draco had contemplated using to burn the manor down. “You come from a bloodline that will take any means necessary to be on the winning side. But do not forget that you are also a Black. You come from a bloodline that will take any means necessary to win on _our_ terms.”

“I thought we were winning,” Draco said, even though he has never once in his life successfully lied in front of his mother.

It was the next day that Harry Potter was shoved onto his knees in Draco’s parlour, his face mangled and swollen. He would have known it was him even if Potter had a bag over his head, even if it weren’t Granger and the Weasel by his side.

“Well, Draco?” his father said. “Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”

He only needed to say yes, say a single word to effectively end the life of the only person capable of ending the Dark Lord.

“I can’t — I can’t be sure.”

“But look at him carefully, look! Come closer,” his father snapped. “Draco, if we are the ones who hand Potter over to the Dark Lord, everything will be forgiv —”

Draco stopped listening, stopped caring. His father’s desperation had already led to the putrefaction of Draco’s home, had given away Draco’s freedom and control.

“I don’t know,” he said, and moved to stand beside his mother. She looked at Draco, and saw the lie.

Draco would have hell to pay once this all fell through. From Aunt Bella, or possibly at the wand of Voldemort himself. But if everything about him was dying already, he might was well die on his own terms.

Outside, in an unwatched corner of the manor grounds, the spring roses began to bud.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Fall Out Boy song, "27". The second half of the verse is removed to keep this dark, depressing little fic halfway hopeful.


End file.
